As a country, the struggle prevails to find a philosophy which would lay the foundation for the way Jamaica’s football should be played.

But what has happened is that each coach, especially at the senior level, brings his own idea of how he wants his team to play, rather than fitting his programme into an established ideology.

There have been many colourful suggestions of how to go about it, but most are entrenched in borrowing from the playing styles of others.

Jamaica’s Under-17 men’s coach Andrew Edwards, though making no claims of being the originator, has settled on a style of play for his World Cup-chasing team, attempting in the main to play in a manner that, in his estimation, best suits the Jamaican reality.

He is determined to teach it to the youngsters, and by his measure, believes it has reaped relative success as the Young Reggae Boyz slowly wrap their minds and feet around the “philosophy”.

“The philosophy we want to play is called one-touch football characterised in offence by speed, power and artistry, and we want to play vertical and diagonal all the time to eliminate square play, or horizontal play,” said Edwards.

“We want to play high-press and counter-pressing as we believe in provoking situations and forcing the opponent into errors and forcing them to play where we want them to play,” he explained.

Even though total possession football is eye-catching, Edwards shared with the Jamaica Observer that his approach will limit this, but not exclude it absolutely.

“As a consequence, that philosophy is not developed around maintaining long periods of possession… it may not look Barcelona-like, which in fact, many teams in the world don’t play that way.

“If you follow the trend in international football you would have noticed in the last World Cup and European Championship, the majority of the games were won by teams with less possession of the football, and there is also a trend towards what we call effective or efficient possession, so that is what we are aiming to do,” said Edwards.

In the recent Caribbean Football Union (CFU) finals in Trinidad and Tobago recently where Jamaica finished third and secured a spot to the CONCACAF stage of World Cup qualification, Edwards said his high-pressed style bore fruits.

“If you realise, we created the most chances in the tournament and that was a consequence of how we play. When we are in good flow, we win possession in key areas which allow us to get to the opponents’ goal very quickly.

“In fact, two of the goals we scored against Curacao were created from high-pressing the opponent, winning the ball and getting behind them quickly.

“It also means that whenever we attack, and in good flow again, when we lose the ball we are in a good position to recover the ball quickly because that is part of the philosophy where we want to play in areas where we have superior numbers and we are playing very direct where we have a lot people going into these areas,” outlined the Manchester High School daCosta Cup football coach.

When in possession, Edwards notes “we want to have our passing combinations to be very fast with one or two touches”.

But he conceded that the process is still a work in progress.

“At this youthful level we expect a lot of errors are going to be made, but I am not worried about the errors we will make, I am more worried about the attitude of the players in the efforts they bring to the idea,” Edwards noted.

In Trinidad, Edward believes his Young Boyz were able to deliver the philosophy, but the effort lacked consistency, giving them a passing grade in their grasp of it.

“From 10, I would have to say maximum of seven, because we were inconsistent and we were not managing it moment to moment in the games.

“For example, when we pressed and cornered them (opponents) in certain areas of the field, they were good enough or we were bad enough to allow them to escape. A lot of the time we were successful, not because we were pressing as a team, which we were supposed to be doing, but because we were pressing as small groups,” said the football tactician.

Edwards, a teacher by trade, believes that the more time he has with the players as a group, the more progress will be made in driving home the teaching.

“We need to get all 10 players involved (when pressing) to make the field real narrow and short for the opposing players and that is what we strive for, but we still have some work to do on that.

“Part of the problem is that we don’t have the players long enough to drill home the philosophy in a more consistent way. But credit to the youngsters who I think have done well in adapting,” he said.

In five games in Trinidad, the Young Boyz defeated Bermuda 6-2, drew 0-0 with champions Haiti and clipped Trinidad 3-2 in the preliminaries. They then lost 0-1 to Cuba in the semi-finals, before blanking Curacao 3-0 in the third-place match.

In keeping with his philosophy, Edwards believes that his team played at the highest intensity throughout the tournament.

“My own observation indicates that we played at higher intensity than all the teams, but for us to sustain that, the physical conditioning comes into real importance there.

“It was also observed that the intensity in Group B was almost pedestrian, except for Cuba who had very quick players upfront. In our Group A, the pace of the games fell when we were not playing,” he argued.

Edwards noted that Jamaica’s opponents were all forced to up the tempo of their play in efforts to keep up with the pace.

“We were the only team that played consistently high-press football, the other teams mixed it up to low or medium-press, occasionally going up to a high-press, and because of that we forced the opponents to play faster.

“I have no intention of changing that (approach). In fact, my intention is to improve that and become more efficient at it and I believe that’s where international football is and I also believe that is what gives us our biggest strength, so we want to improve our pressing game and the general intensity of our play.

“I know that the physical, nutritional and health aspects are crucial in maintaining such a philosophy,” Edwards concluded.